20th Century Fox Dubai Park On Indefinite Hold Due to Oversaturation

The theme park bubble is slowly starting to burst in Dubai. According to an exclusive story with Arabian Business, the CEO of Al Ahli Group who wants to finance 20th Century Fox Dubai, the market is becoming oversaturated. For those unfamiliar, this park was slated for a potential opening date of 2020 and was to feature Ice Age, The Simpsons, Sons of Anarchy and Rio attractions.

“We’verealizedd that there’s now a serious supply of theme parks in Dubai,” Al Alhi Group CEO Mohammad Khammas told Arabian Business, in an exclusive interview. “The developers have done an amazing job, and the existing offering is perfect, but right now people should stay away from developing another one, at least for the foreseeable future.”

He’s right. At the end of the day, Dubai has not proven itself a theme park destination just yet with so many parks opening back to back. We have warned about this aggressive strategy for years here at Theme Park University. The numbers coming out of Dubai Parks and Resorts are also telling on how slow the market is to embrace new parks.

While the project isn’t completely dead in the water, I wouldn’t hold my breath for it to become a reality. We will continue to follow the stories coming out of Dubai as there is a lot of interesting stories coming out of the region.